


A Meeting of True Minds

by Cerberusia



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Auror Harry Potter, HP: EWE, M/M, Mentions of past child death, Post-Hogwarts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-15
Updated: 2015-11-15
Packaged: 2018-05-02 09:38:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5243489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerberusia/pseuds/Cerberusia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry is an Auror called in to discover why Draco Malfoy has been sent a cursed mirror. But that's not the real mystery...</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Meeting of True Minds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [indyonblue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/indyonblue/gifts).



> Real life conspired to keep me from finishing this fic, but finish it I did! Many thanks to my beta, N, for taking this on at such short notice, and many thanks to the mods who kindly allowed me an extension ♥

For once, the call to action came after breakfast rather than before. In Harry's opinion, that set the day off to a good start: a stomach full of bacon tended to have an optimistic effect on him.

The usual effects of a Portkey on a full stomach dampened his spirits slightly, but as the queasy sensation waned and he became aware of the lack of smoking rubble and screaming around him, they rose again. The idyllic calm of the well-manicured gardens he had landed in suggested _Pureblood_ , but also _artifact safely contained_ , which was a pleasant change from the usual, which involved him being called after a Dark artifact had already incapacitated or possessed somebody.

"Auror Potter, sir," said a junior at his elbow - Smythe, the posh one - "the artifact is safely contained and there have been no casualties."

"Thought so," Harry said, picking himself up and letting Smythe steer him towards the large stone house. "Straightforward bag-and-tag, then?"

"Yes, sir," said Smythe. "Shame we even had to call you in, but you know how it is." Harry did indeed: they needed a superior officer to oversee the containment procedure, and he'd been available. Well, it kept him out of the office and away from Percy's enthusiasm - bordering on fetish - for finding him paperwork, he couldn't complain.

The first inkling he had that this was not going to be as easy as he had hoped was the timbre of a very familiar voice briskly answering another just beyond the open French doors. The second was Smythe's partner Johnson - the tall one - and the clipped tones of the first, Harry realised as they stepped into the shady portico, belonged to Draco Malfoy.

"I have received several visitors in the last six months, and I don't keep records of them," he was saying with an impatient air. Harry had the strangest urge to smile: Malfoy clearly hadn't changed too much since they'd last seen each other. He stepped over the windowsill and scrutinised the object of his teenage ire.

Malfoy was tall and thin, like both his parents, and as pale and pointy as ever. He no longer greased his hair into submission - though perhaps he just hadn't had time that morning, because after a moment Harry realised that he was still in his dressing-gown. He looked thoroughly irritated, which Harry supposed was understandable.

Johnson caught sight of him and looked a touch relieved. Still not sure of herself, even though Malfoy was being surprisingly civil about the whole thing. In Harry's estimation, there was nothing for it but experience or a career change; he hoped the former would come before the latter, because he quite liked Johnson and the Department had enough trouble hanging on to women as it was.

Malfoy also turned, and Harry took an indecent amount of pleasure in seeing his eyes pop as he realised who had just entered his house. Not because he bore Malfoy any ill-will, because he didn't any more, but because it made him look quite ridiculous and even more mustelid than usual. Harry smiled at him warmly.

"Morning, Malfoy," he said, which was less than perfect professionalism, but in his experience using formality with Malfoy got you nowhere. A flash of light played over the tiled floor, and after a moment Harry realised that it was a moving mosaic.

"Good morning, Potter," replied Malfoy, dryly but without aggression. He pulled his dressing gown tighter around himself. It was a very nice dressing-gown, soft grey with the sort of shimmering deep pile that made Harry think of chinchillas. He was still staring at Harry.

"I gather that Auror Johnson has taken your account of what happened, but could you give me it in brief?" Harry kept his mild, friendly tone. Malfoy gave a minute shrug, looked away, and acquiesced.

"I was sorting through the gifts I have received over the past few months in the course of visiting friends, here and elsewhere. Among them I discovered a mirror that I did not remember receiving but recognised to be Cursed, and I Flooed the Ministry once away." A neat summary. Malfoy met Harry's eyes.

"Sorting through gifts?" asked Harry, striving to keep his tone free of accusation. "Isn't it a bit early for that sort of thing?"

"I'm an early riser." Malfoy noted the look Harry gave his attire. "Though not an early dresser," he added. "And before you ask, Auror Johnson had got to asking me the identities of the friends with whom I have recently stayed and friends who have stayed here with me." His nostrils flared briefly. "I shall look in my appointments book, though that won't mention any guests who turned up at short notice." Which was better than he'd given Johnson, though Malfoy seemed to be scrutinising him again.

"Thank you, Malfoy," said Harry, pleased with his compliance. "Though we could narrow it down a lot if you'd tell me who would want to send you a Cursed mirror. Do you know what kind of Curse was on it?"

"Afraid not," said Malfoy, with a slight wrinkle of his nose. "I didn't want to examine it too closely in case the Curse activated, you understand. As for who might send it...As I'm sure you know, Potter, there are plenty of wizards who dislike me, but I don't believe I've recently upset anyone enough to provoke a Curse."

Harry chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment, considering which tack to take.

"Cursed mirrors are most commonly sent to women," said Johnson unexpectedly. Both men swivelled to look at her, having forgotten she was there. She stood her ground. "Could the mirror have been meant not for you, but for your wife?" she suggested. Harry had forgotten that Malfoy was married, though he dimly recalled reading about it in the paper; he didn't remember the wife's name, only that it wasn't Pansy Parkinson.

Malfoy's face set in a cold expression which Harry knew well from school.

"If it was, whoever sent it is not close enough to me to be privy to my private life." On the outs with the wife, then? Harry nodded and made a noise of acknowledgement, as well as a mental note to check up on that. He'd heard nothing, but Malfoy's personal life wasn't widely gossiped about, and he'd assumed there was nothing there of sufficient interest.

Johnson, meanwhile, seemed to be waiting for the right time to ask another question, quill at the ready. Harry would have liked to ask Malfoy a few more probing questions, but Johnson seemed poised to take the initiative in a way he had rarely seen from her.

"I'll leave you in Auror Johnson's hands, then," he said, and with a polite nod to Malfoy and a benevolent smile to Johnson, he did. He fancied he could feel Malfoy's eyes fixed on his back as he exited the house.

He got hold of Smythe, who was wandering around the gardens in a purposeful way that Harry recognised as him being at a loose end, and got him to show him the mirror in question. Safely neutralised in its box - designed by the Department of Mysteries and of appropriately mysterious construction - it appeared to be simply a handheld silver looking-glass of the old-fashioned type. Was this the kind of gift usually exchanged between wealthy Purebloods? He asked Smythe.

"I think so, sir, though you'd probably have to ask a Pureblood to make sure. But mirrors are considered lucky, so I suppose it makes sense." Vaguely, Harry wondered whether this was where the Muggle superstition about breaking them had come from.

They returned to the house and met Johnson leaving it. She had an air of satisfaction about her.

"He was ever so much better-behaved once he'd talked to you," she said to Harry, with a pleased look.

"Glad to hear it," said Harry, squeezing her shoulder, before he strode past her to say their goodbyes to Malfoy, who had come to stand in the portico and whose grey eyes snapped immediately to Harry's as he entered. They were a slightly curious shape, though Harry couldn't have identified what the difference was.

"We'll keep you updated on the progress of our investigation," he assured Malfoy, who looked doubtful. "Nice seeing you again," he added, because it was true, Malfoy had been very pleasant and Harry had discovered in the past half-hour that he cared more about Malfoy's welfare than he had realised.

Malfoy's eyebrows raised briefly, then lowered.

"Of course," he said, and nothing more. But there was something alert in his manner that seemed to be trying to say something to Harry, only Harry couldn't interpret it.

Harry thought about it all the way down to the Department of Mysteries. Smythe and Johnson he had dismissed to take the box and its paperwork to Cursed Objects on Level 2, and they had looked relieved: like most of the Ministry, they disliked having to deal with Level 9 in any capacity.

Entry to the Department of Mysteries required something Harry had never encountered as a security measure elsewhere: a test of magical signature. He hadn't been able to sense it the first time he came, or had just assumed that it was nerves, but now as he touched the black door at the end of the corridor, he at once felt a peculiar chill run through him. He shuddered, and the door swung open.

The entrance chamber was always empty, but with the suggestion of permanent surveillance. The cool blue light of the torches lent the proceedings an unreal quality. Harry took a breath and said, as if announcing a Floo destination,

"Records."

Several identical doors flicked by, then settled. Harry pressed his hand to the one presented to him and felt again that little chill before it gave way.

He walked onto a dais with three doors leading off on either side, and steps to the front. The Hall of Records stretched out before him, seemingly endless. There were centuries worth of parchment here, yet Harry knew that even on the most obscure notes he would find no dust. These were not the same records as were kept on Level 3, the Public Records; these were of quite a different nature.

"Malfoy, Draco," Harry announced. Despite the vast emptiness around him, there was no echo. At once, one of the blue lights next to the middle door on his left turned orange.

Behind that door was a small reading room, no more welcoming that the rest of the department, though when Harry sat down he discovered that the chair was far more comfortable than it appeared. In here the lights were yellow, to save the reader's eyes. The brown file on the desk was unlabelled, but when Harry opened it it revealed the personal details of Draco Malfoy. Full name, date of birth, place of birth, height to the quarter-inch, weight to the pound. Photographs at all ages. And then what Harry was looking for: an annotated chronology.

The notes in the Hall of Records were colour-coded according to subject. The first event in Malfoy's file was blue, the colour indicating hatches, matches and dispatches, as Molly called them.

_3rd September 1990: Conception._

Harry rifled quickly through the first half of the notes: he'd been there for a good part of this and had already read them besides. Dark activity, confirmed or suspected, covered the pages in dark purple ink. He stopped at the next blue event.

_9th June 2005: Marriage to Astoria Greengrass._

There was a photograph: Malfoy and Greengrass, arm in arm, smiling at the camera then turning to smile at each other. It was a private sort of smile, the kind shared between lovers and conspirators.

A couple of years later, after an extensive list of possible Dark activity, another event in blue ink: the birth of a son, Scorpius. Another photograph, recent: a small blond boy, not yet in double digits, in formal robes, occasionally glancing at something out of frame - a parent or a nanny, Harry supposed. He scrutinised the picture, but concluded only that Scorpius looked healthy and well-treated, just a little nervous over having a formal picture taken.

More reams of dark purple ink, on and on - suspicion everywhere, but no real evidence. That the Unspeakables were so conscientious was to their credit, but constant vigilance meant that they often jumped at shadows, and Harry wondered whether that might be the case here. Malfoy was still a posh snob and probably still a bit prejudiced, as were many former Death Eaters, but he'd been very glad to renounce the Dark as soon as he humanly could, and Harry would be very surprised if he'd become involved again of his own free will.

Finally, another blue annotation, dated to the previous month: _Wife initiates divorce proceedings_. After that, only the brief summary of this morning's call.

Harry looked at that note, _Wife initiates divorce proceedings_ , and thought of Malfoy alone there in his huge house, pale and pinched and oddly fragile. He knew that feeling well; still felt it sometimes, even though it had been years since he had been in Malfoy's position.

He waved the file away and sat there for a long minute, deep in thought. Then he went back up to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and his office, where he wrote his statements and drank the Ministry's smoky-flavoured tea until five to eleven, when he Flooed to Hogsmeade.

McGonnagall had not invited him to interview her at her office in Hogwarts, as Harry had expected, but in one of the small private tea rooms above the Fountain of Fair Fortune, which Harry had never previously been in and which revealed itself to be a rather genteel sort of pub with plenty of plush wingback armchairs. The one McGonnagall sat in was upholstered in Black Watch tartan.

"Even I do not live at Hogwarts all the year round," she said drily, waving her hand to pour him tea from the admirably steady china teapot. She looked no older that she had when Harry was at school; Harry would have thought she'd resemble a prune by now, but her wrinkles extended no further than the corners of her eyes. "I keep a summer home on the Moray coast, but it's quite a distance to Apparate, so I am combining this interview with a trip for a new set of robes." Harry, appropriately humbled, added a splash of milk to his tea by hand.

"You may already have heard this somewhere through the grapevine," he began, "but Draco Malfoy recently discovered a Cursed mirror among his possessions that he doesn't remember receiving. Since magical signature tracing is proving ineffective, we're having to search for who sent it the old-fashioned way. Of course, the context suggests that the sender was someone whom Malfoy already knew."

"Of course," McGonnagall agreed, squeezing some lemon into her tea. "As Professor Malfoy's superior, I am naturally in a position to help you. Although I can tell you now, I don't think it's anything related to the school."

Harry frowned.

"Malfoy is really a teacher? Of his own choice?" To be frank, despite getting good marks, Malfoy had never impressed him as particularly clever, and certainly not as someone who would be interested in teaching. Too much like hard work. Harry had scarcely believed it when he read the brown-inked legend _1st August 2010: Starts work at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry as Professor of Arithmancy_.

McGonnagall pursed her lips and prodded the strainer to sit more neatly in its tray.

"He achieved a first-class Arithmancy Mastery and applied for the job when a vacancy appeared. One might suspect that he gained that First through hard work rather than talent - but then, Severus was extraordinarily gifted, and much good it did him." This Harry conceded, but his mental image of Malfoy as a teacher did rather resemble Snape in its haughty sneer. He certainly couldn't imagine Malfoy being _patient_ , which to him seemed the primary requirement for teaching.

"Well," he said, concealing his doubts, "is he any good, do you think?"

"He's no Pomona," - Professor Sprout had always been a famously excellent teacher, clever and personable - "but he knows his stuff and, contrary to expectations, I believe he has discovered that he rather enjoys it." She tested the temperature of her tea with a hand over it. "Which I can tell you I _greatly_ prefer to a teacher of extraordinary ability who hated every minute of it."

"I would have preferred that too," said Harry drily, and they shared a look. "How does he get on with the rest of the staff?" he asked.

"Relations are cordial, if not overly warm. Draco keeps himself somewhat apart from the rest of us." She considered her words. "I would put it down to a reticence about personal matters - no doubt developed in his youth - rather than dislike, or even lack of interest. It's a shame, he was quite a social boy at school." Because of his father's money, Harry thought but didn't say. The teenaged Malfoy had been smarmy, but curiously for a spoilt only child had never seemed to master the ability to turn on charm like a tap. Even Dudley had learnt that.

"So they wouldn't know about recent personal troubles?" Harry suggested, fishing and making it obvious that he was doing so. McGonnagall raised an eyebrow and looked at him over the rims of her spectacles.

"Mr. Potter, even _I_ haven't heard about any 'recent personal troubles'. No, I've heard no whispers - and if you thought there were no secrets among Hogwarts students, there are even fewer among the staff. Whatever it is, he's kept it _very_ much under his hat."

McGonnagall's assessment of Malfoy ran through Harry's head for the next hour as he wrote a summary of their interview. She would know him better than Harry did, now. But even she hadn't known about the divorce in progress. Harry wondered at Malfoy's splendid isolation, and again remembered the peculiarity in his manner when Harry went to leave. Loneliness, perhaps; but there was some kind of recognition in his look, or something seeking recognition, only Harry didn't recognise it and found that frustrating.

He couldn't justify it by claiming that it was part of the investigation, because it wasn't. Or rather, it might be, but that wasn't his reason for wanting to understand, like how on reflection his fixation on Malfoy back in sixth year hadn't just been about his potential Dark activities. Harry had hardly had the time to spare to worry about Malfoy then, but seeing Malfoy in the Great Hall looking pale and drawn had always grasped his attention for a moment.

Why he should be so concerned for a boy, now a man, who would have been elated and now probably wouldn't give a damn if Harry got sat on by a dragon and squashed to a humiliating death, Harry couldn't say. There was just something about Malfoy's peculiar vulnerability, which sat so uneasily with his arrogance, that made Harry want to prod him until he divulged his secrets.

So he created a Portkey to Malfoy Manor to do precisely that. What he had not anticipated was that when he had trudged through the beautiful grounds all the way up to the back of the house and the conservatory that he had performed his interviews in, Draco would not be the Manor's only inhabitant.

Like her husband, Astoria Malfoy was tall and pale, with incredible cheekbones. But where Malfoy's nose was straight, hers was magnificently aquiline, and her hair was glossy and dark. She reminded Harry somewhat of photographs of the Black sisters when they were young; but then, they were probably third cousins twice over.

Little Scorpius next to her, however, was a miniature of his father at his age; or so Harry presumed, not having seen Malfoy at age eight but able to venture a guess. Small, pale and pointy, with hair so fine and fair that it was almost white. His wide grey eyes were very light, with thick dark rings around the irises, a look both attractive and eerie.

He'd been born in the same year as Al. They would have been the same age right now. Harry caught himself wondering if they might have been friends at Hogwarts, and stopped.

"How do you do." Astoria extended her hand, which was pale but capable, with broad palms and long fingers. She was a breeder and trainer of Hippogriffs, a fact whose irony Harry had greatly enjoyed when he read it. She looked the part, in her smart tweeds and knee boots. Harry took her hand and wasn't surprised by the firmness of her handshake.

Scorpius said nothing, but extended his hand also, and Harry solemnly took it. Scorpius didn't smile, but he watched Harry very intensely in a way that reminded him of Lily. She was meant to be coming over this weekend: he would have to find somewhere suitable to take her, probably on Hermione's recommendation.

Astoria gave him a warm, professional smile, the sort that made the back of his neck prickle uncomfortably. She had risen from her seat on the sofa to greet him, and they were now stranded awkwardly in the middle of the room. The mosaic flashed by again under their feet; Harry still couldn't tell what it was.

"I'm here about the cursed object sent to your husband," he said, praying for respite. Astoria offered him none.

"Of course you are." Beside her, Scorpius continued to train his fathomless gaze on Harry. Did this child not blink? Harry steeled himself.

"I have questions for your husband, but in the meantime, Mrs. Malfoy, I was wondering if I might ask you some?"

"Oh, no need to ask Draco," said Astoria with affectionate dismissiveness, "he's a very clever wizard but bless him, if you ask him who he thinks is plotting against him, you can cross whatever name he gives you off the list."

"Oh," said Harry, noting that this tendency had not changed since school. "Do you think that you would know?"

"Mr. Potter, it's my vocation." Astoria - how easy it was to think of her as such - beamed at him. She too, Harry vaguely remembered, had been in Slytherin. "Tell me, what was the object? I only heard about this at lunchtime; Scorpius and I were in Spain, you see, to visit some of the family." Harry had wondered why they were not at the Manor when Draco made his unfortunate discovery.

"A mirror," he said, "with an as-yet-unidentified Curse."

At once, Astoria's face changed. It was the look of a woman coming to a great realisation.

"Oh, I know _exactly_ who this is," she said, in tones of deep satisfaction. "Just hang on a moment while I fetch her for you." So saying, she took down a carved stone box from the mantel and threw some Floo powder into the fire, followed shortly by her head.

On Harry's end, there was silence. A clock somewhere ticked; a dove cooed outside.

Since staring at his suspect's arse might seem unprofessional, Harry looked around for Scorpius in the hope that he might clarify matters: children often saw more than they understood. But Scorpius had vanished, quite unnoticed, and so Harry looked around the room instead. It was a conservatory crossed with a library, the floors tiled but the walls lined with books. Curiously for a house of this size and stature, it had no portraits on the walls - for there was no room - but there were a few photographs on the low tables, and Harry took the opportunity to examine them.

There was a wedding photo, of course, the same one as was in the Ministry file. A couple of Astoria standing next to a Hippogriff, to which a prize ribbon had been carefully and respectfully attached. Nothing of either set of parents, though there was the formal portrait of Scorpius.

The one oddity was what looked like a candid shot, as if taken by a friend, though admittedly one who was good with a camera. Astoria and Pansy Parkinson sat at a table, both beaming at the camera and then at each other, Pansy's hand covering Astoria's. They were both nicely dressed, but not ostentatiously so, and it looked like a friendly dinner at a restaurant, though not one Harry recognised. He put it down, then nearly knocked it over when two loud thumps rang out behind him.

He spun around, wand out, to discover Astoria and a woman who could only be her sister dusting themselves off.

"Mr. Potter!" exclaimed Daphne heartily. Harry vaguely remembered her from school, but failed to summon to mind a single distinguishing thing about her except that she had been in Slytherin. She was tall, slim and fair, with a particularly English rustic pink-cheeked beauty, a great contrast with her sister's icy look. "Haven't seen you in years!" she cried, with more warmth than Harry felt the situation strictly warranted.

Rapid footsteps in the hall, and Malfoy came rushing in. When he saw Daphne and Astoria with Harry waiting in the wings, he stopped and pretended that he had just been fixing his sleeve rather than reaching for his wand. Harry doubted that either of the women were fooled. Before Harry could formulate a reply to Daphne's greeting, Astoria rounded on her sister.

"Daffy, did you send Draco a cursed mirror?" Astoria demanded, folding her arms.

"Yes, I did!" announced Daphne with pride. "I knew perfectly well that it wouldn't have been _you_ at fault, and I could wager a guess as to what Draco's problem was, and I'm not above a bit of cursework to make a point."

"Oh, for Merlin's sake," said Astoria, disgustedly, "if I'd wanted a curse on him, I'd have done it myself."

"That's what you say," Daphne countered, "but you've always been too willing to let people wipe their feet on you and decide it's too much trouble to get your own back. Where's your gumption, woman?"

"Daffy," Astoria snapped, tiring of their banter and revealing that she really was quite cross, "I was the one who decided to divorce _him_."

Daphne seemed to momentarily lose her breath.

"I'm an invert, Daffy," explained Astoria into the sudden silence. "I spent many years in a happy marriage with a dear friend, I did my duty to our family and his, and now I am divorcing him to marry the love of my life." Harry suddenly remembered the way Pansy Parkinson had tenderly covered her hand, but said nothing. This was clearly Astoria's moment.

"Well, why didn't you _tell_ me?" Daphne demanded, now looking confused and upset.

"Because you were so pleased to have me safely married off into the Malfoys!" Now Astoria looked upset. "You wanted me to do my duty, so I did it! And I got a wonderful son out of it, and a deep, respectful friendship, and now I'm ready to do what I've wanted for three years, which is to take the woman I love as my lawful wedded wife in front of the whole Wizarding world! And that includes both you and Draco, so if you can't behave yourself I'll hex your wand up your nose!" She did, indeed, have her wand out. Harry took a breath and prepared himself to cast a wandless _Protego_ if needed. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Malfoy's hand hovering over where he kept his wand.

But instead of going for her wand, Daphne let her face crumple. Astoria lowered her wand, and at once found her hands seized by her sister.

"Oh, darling, of _course_ I wouldn't spoil your wedding day!" Daphne stared soulfully into her sister's eyes as she insisted, "I'll have to help with the planning, of course - tell me the bride's colouring and we'll find something that suits both of you..."

To Harry, this did not seem to be the most pressing concern; but Astoria was smiling so he supposed that if this was the way in which the Greengrass sisters chose to deal with their differences, he could hardly complain. Malfoy had removed his hand from his wand and was now making as unobtrusive an exit as he could. Harry didn't blame him: Daphne had not yet, after all, made any promise to desist in her emnity.

Since it seemed highly unlikely that anyone would be pressing charges, Harry elected to follow Malfoy through the French windows, out into the warm June sunshine. The grounds of Malfoy Manor blazed with colour, full of immaculate summer flowers, most of which Harry couldn't name. Hedges and tall hollyhocks edged beds of peonies and roses and flowers of all kinds, interspersed with tough-barked trees whose gnarled trunks told how long they had been there. Snapdragons fluttered in the gentle breeze like tiny flames. It was a scene of astonishing beauty and tranquillity, and it was a long while before Harry broke their comfortable silence.

"At this point, I think you could call me Harry," he offered. He was fully prepared for Malfoy to refuse, and was startled by the pleased expression that flitted across his face.

"Then I suppose I'll have to ask you to call me Draco," he said with good humour. "I know that Mother insisted that you call her Narcissa, so she'll be pleased that we're on thee-and-thou terms, as she puts it."

"I admit, I've never really been sure how to refer to you in conversation with her," Harry admitted sheepishly. Draco gave a small laugh. "How has she reacted to the divorce?" Harry pressed. "I assume you've told her. Is she...upset?"

"Oh, no," said Draco, with perfect nonchalance. "Not at all. She knew all along that it was a marriage of convenience rather than love. Not that I don't love Asty very much, of course, but - you see, I'm an invert too." His eyes slid to Harry's, then flicked away to the view of the lake in the distance.

Some aspects of Draco's behaviour were abruptly clarified for Harry.

"What a marriage," he said dryly. "When they talk about a 'meeting of true minds', I don't think that's quite what they mean."

Draco laughed, though a touch thinly. "Asty was being honest," he said, "we really have been friends, good friends. And I'm glad that she'll be free to marry Pansy. Scorpius of course is thrilled that he'll have three parents, and is looking forward to the increase in birthday presents." He went quiet. "Scorpius is the reason we did it," he added after a moment, "and he was absolutely worth it."

Harry swallowed, thinking of the small, pale boy with the clever eyes, eight years old. Would Al-?

"In my experience, marriages are often held together by the children." And then he rushed on, resisting the temptation to leave the platitude hanging - "As I discovered when my own broke down."

"I remember," said Draco, quietly but without pity. "It was all over the papers." So Harry had been told; he could never bring himself to read any of the articles in question.

"When I read the announcement, I wondered whether our sons might meet and be friends," said Draco after some time. "It seemed - appropriate."

"It would have been," agreed Harry. Al, of course, had not lived to an age at which friendship became a concept. "This is not, of course, to say that we must now go our separate ways," he added, because he thought that was what Draco was trying to obliquely hint at. And indeed, Draco perked up like a flower that had been watered.

"I certainly hope not," he said, and something about the way he couldn't meet Harry's eyes made the cogs turn and the pieces slide at last into place. Any self-satisfaction that Harry might have felt was overridden by something big, some great pressure inside him. Draco's strangeness, the sense that he was seeking something - explained. A relief, and yet, Harry's feelings were complicated and not yet explained, because this explanation did not appease his curiosity. Nothing, he realised, could appease his curiosity about Malfoy. And he was determined that this was not the end, but the start of a fruitful line of enquiry, for both of them.

"You sly dog," Harry said affectionately, and didn't explain when Draco looked at him, just walked a little closer.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! You can show your appreciation for the author in a comment here or on [Livejournal](http://hd-erised.livejournal.com/53547.html). ♥
> 
> This story is part of an on-going anonymous fest hosted at [hd_erised @ livejournal.com](http://hd_erised.livejournal.com/). The author will be revealed January 8th.


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